


Night Sweats

by celestialanomaly



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Character Study, First Time Posting and It's This Wow, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Read Those Warnings Folks, Tagging This Pretty Conservatively Because Content, Vomiting, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2020-12-09 05:21:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20989511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestialanomaly/pseuds/celestialanomaly
Summary: Sylvain had lots nightmares. The squeeze of a meaty fist around his throat as he scrabbled for purchase against it in a vain attempt to peel it off was familiar by now. The image of the leering, blurry face of his brother as he fell down down down into the abyss of the well before reaching the shallow bottom was seared into his mind. Miklan's face would probably be there with all of it's fiery hatred as he lay dying on his deathbed - and Sylvain was okay with that.Sylvain was okay with that because there were far worse nightmares waiting for him when he drifted off to sleep. These always caught him off guard and left him feeling vulnerable and afraid for days afterwards. Not that he would let on to his friends and classmates. He couldn't let on. He had a reputation to uphold after all.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey wow this isn't what I wanted my first ever post on Ao3 to be, but here we are. Uh, haven't written anything worth reading in over a decade (no exaggeration) but I used to write casually on FF.Net. I'm feeling brave today for the first time in a long time. Also it's October so people are posting some lovely angst, gore, and hurt/comfort fics so what's one more to add to the pile, right? Right? Except we might not get to the comfort part because I'm not sure I'll continue this. Think of this more as a toe in the water to see if I can handle the ~*aNxIeTy*~. 
> 
> Also I'm shit at titles and I'm real sorry.
> 
> Please leave me a comment. It would mean the world to me and might give me the push I need to be productive. Maybe not for this fic, but eeeeeh.

Sylvain had lots nightmares. The squeeze of a meaty fist around his throat as he scrabbled for purchase against it in a vain attempt to peel it off was familiar by now. The image of the leering, blurry face of his brother as he fell down down down into the abyss of the well before reaching the shallow bottom was seared into his mind. Miklan's face would probably be there with all of it's fiery hatred as he lay dying on his deathbed - and Sylvain was okay with that.

Sylvain was okay with that because there were far worse nightmares waiting for him when he drifted off to sleep. These always caught him off guard and left him feeling vulnerable and afraid for days afterwards. Not that he would let on to his friends and classmates. He couldn't let on. He had a reputation to uphold after all.

\---

_Sylvaaaaain_.

Like the ghost in one of Mercedes' stories, someone was calling his name. A woman's voice so soft and sweet anyone else would mistake it for the coo of a lover. Sylvain knew better. The familiar halls of the Gautier estate flew past him in a blur as he ran as fast as his legs could carry him. If he could just find a way out, everything would be okay this time!

No one could hurt him.

No one could touch him.

If he could just get through a door - any door - leading outside, it was only a scant quarter mile in any direction to the fringe of pine trees that circled the estate. It was wild country and bitterly cold this time of year (how did he know what time of year it was?), but freezing to death in the snow was a far better fate than-

_Sylvain!_

His mind had wandered and now it was too late. She was here and she was waiting for him with her red stained lips spread impossibly wide over misleadingly white teeth. Her arms were spread wide, her clawed fingers splayed out to catch him. Sylvain tried to stop but his momentum carried him into her embrace. He felt her claws scratch at his skin, leaving white hot trails down his arms and sides, but not sink into his flesh. Instead, they slashed and tore at his clothes until he was bare and shaking.

Shame as bright and hot as her touch bloomed in his chest even as she murmured soft reassuring nothings into his ear. Her breath was sickly sweet and smelled of wine, but felt every bit as cold as early morning fog. Sylvain opened his mouth to protest as she pressed against him, but her tongue and teeth ate hungrily at any sound that managed to squirm it's way through his throat. His hands clawed at her face as he tried desperately to escape her, but she didn't seem to care. The Faceless Woman never cared.

\---

Sylvain lurched up and awake in his bed with his teeth buried in the soft flesh of his own hand between finger and thumb. He'd had these nightmares for years, but he had never screamed loud enough to wake anyone _yet_.

He couldn't let on.

Cold sweat dripped down his face as he desperately sucked in air through his nose and out around his clenched teeth and hand. At least he hadn't broken the skin this time. Felix had had questions when he noticed the red crescent of teeth marks on the back of his hand in the training yard last moon and-

The sudden thought of Felix broke off pieces of Sylvain's resolve like splinters of wood from the support beam that was his sanity. That familiar feeling of shame rose up in his chest like a flame and Sylvain knew he was about to be sick only moments before he was. He scrambled free of his twisted sheets, threw himself to the floor, and managed to snake one arm out just far enough to snatch the waste bin by his desk and get it under his face before he purged what remained of last night's dinner.

When he was finished he didn't even bother sitting back up again. Instead, he slumped to the floor in a heap and pressed his cheek to the worn wood. New rivulets of sweat lanced down his shoulders and back and cooled in the air, and he was glad for once that he had forgotten to close his bedroom window before falling asleep. Plus, the floor wasn't that bad all things considered. At least it wasn't The Bed. Not the bed in Garreg Mach Monastery, where he was currently enrolled in the Officer's Academy and safely away from home - the one in the guest room at the Gautier estate. The guest room in the East wing with the dark purple sheets and-

Sylvain was sick into the bin again, or at least as sick as his empty stomach allowed him to be. Tears burned behind his eyelids and he couldn't hold back the wretched sob that came up with the watery acid.

_Get a grip, Sylvain! Stop thinking about it! Thinking about it only ever makes it worse_!

"Stop it, Stupid," he mumbled as he wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand and dropped to his side by the bin again. "Worthless, idiot fucking garbage." He rolled onto his back and stared up at the dark ceiling above him.

_You asked for it._

"You're a liar," he whispered, but whether it was directed at himself or at the bitter whispers in his mind, he wasn't sure. "You've always been a liar."


	2. Chapter 2

_Whap_

Sylvain could already feel his cheek start to redden as blood rushed to his face. Still, he kept his grin in place and tried again. “Come on, baby. It's not like-”

_Whap_

“...that.” He finished lamely as the irate girl in front of him delivered another stinging slap, this time to his other cheek. He made a quick mental note to stop going out with brawling students.

“You can't even remember my name!”

“Sure I can...” Sylvain tried that grin again – the crooked one with the lowered lashes. It got em every time. “...Stephanie?” He hoped the question mark at the end of his statement wasn't as obvious to her as it sounded to himself.

_Whap_

Okay...maybe it was. “Stacey?”

_Whap_

“Stevie?”

_Whap_

“It's Mina, you...you....WHORE!”

The blonde girl in front of him reeled back to deliver yet another slap to his already stinging face, but this time Sylvain caught her wrist before she could deliver it. Mina looked every bit as surprised as he felt.

“Want to run that by me again?” Sylvain almost didn't recognize his own voice. It was dark – dangerous in a way he had never thought himself capable of. He hadn't been kidding when he had told the Professor that girls loved a brooding noble, but this was something else entirely. It did the trick though. Mina wrenched her arm from his grasp and took a step back, though the fury never left her face. She looked like she wanted to do more than hit him.

“Come on, Mina! He's not worth it,” another voice broke the tense silence between them. A red-head in elaborate braids caught up her friend's arm and started to steer her towards another table. Sylvain had completely forgotten they were in the dining hall of all places. He tried to glance around as inconspicuously as possible to judge the damage. How many others had witnessed this whole debacle? He made almost immediate eye contact with Ingrid, whose cheeks were so red with rage she might as well have been the one being slapped.

Surprisingly, that grounded him. He raised his arms in a mockery of surrender and shook his head with a wry smile. “Girls! Can't reason with 'em!” he pronounced loudly, earning a few appreciative chuckles from a cluster of other male students nearby, even as Mina lunged against her friend's restraint in his direction. Yup, she definitely wanted to do more than slap him. Well the laughter at least was good news. He could charm his way out of this as per usual and no one would be any the wiser to the fact that his chest ached just as much as his face did.

He looked up at Ingrid again. Her cheeks were now so red they were almost purple with suppressed shouting. That was his cue: time to knock it off.

“You have a great rest of your morning,” Sylvain tipped Mina a sarcastic salute and turned on his heel.

Sylvain sauntered towards one of the exits (sauntering being the only pace he could come up with that wasn't _sprinting as far and as fast away from here as physically possible_), and tried not to dwell on how much every part of him felt like it was on fire. He'd dealt with bad break-ups before; it was unavoidable in his “line of work”, as he called it, much to Ingrid's disgust, but this was something else. Unbidden memories of the night before rushed to the surface, dousing the phantom flames in his limbs and chest with icy splashes of fear. The days following one of Those Nights were never easy, not that anything ever really was anymore.

He had just made it to the open archway when another body crashed headlong into him. Well, maybe he had been going a little fast so it was more like he crashed into them, but he wasn't the one knocked to the ground.

“Watch where you're going you half-wit!” Felix Hugo Fraldarius glared up at him from where he was sprawled on the cobblestones. Sylvain's stomach plummeted like a boulder. The rest of him stayed standing, but apparently his stomach hadn't gotten that message.

  
Fuck.

“Felix!” Sylvain tried for that grin again, but felt it twist wrong on his face. He quickly stooped to offer his friend a hand, hoping Felix hadn't noticed it. “Fancy running into you here.”

“This is the dining hall you absolute buffoon,” Felix grumbled, even as he took the proffered hand and hauled himself up. He didn't seem particularly interested in looking Sylvain in the face – a divine mercy sent by the Goddess herself as far as Sylvain was concerned – since he seemed to be looking over Sylvain's shoulder at something. “Why are you storming around the place like the Boar Prince, anyway?”

Was that genuine concern on his taciturn friend's face? Surely not.

Sylvain shrugged, “Whatever reason you're thinking is probably correct.”

“Sylvain-!” Felix started dangerously before being unceremoniously cut off.

“HAVE YOU LOST YOUR TINY MIND?!” Sylvain winced at Ingrid's raised voice right behind him. Shit shit shit. They weren't even properly out of the dining hall yet. So much for divine mercy from the Goddess. “How could you forget that you had already made breakfast plans with one girl, and invite _two more?!”_

“Have fun,” Felix said sarcastically as he pushed past Sylvain. “See you in class if you're still alive.”

“Look,” Sylvain said as he turned to Ingrid, ignoring Felix's jab, and raised his hands in entreaty for mercy. “Maybe I'm not on my A-game today, but there's no need to scream about it.” Indeed, heads were turning in their direction to see what the cause of this second commotion was, and this time Sylvain was in just the right spot to see every single one of them.

“'But' Nothing! Who does that?!” Ingrid's voice had lowered into a shrill whisper, which honestly wasn't much better than shouting in Sylvain's book.

“Ingrid, it's fine! I'll apologize later and everything will be-”

“Yeah, like you're _actually_ going to be the one apologizing to those girls.” Ingrid folded her arms over her chest and glared up at him.

Ouch. “Yes, I _actually_ will be!” Sylvain fired back.

“You're such a liar! You know it will be me out there trying to keep you from getting throttled in your sleep! You and I both know you won't even talk to those girls again, let alone apologize. When will you _learn,_ Sylvain!”

Ingrid had more to say, but Sylvain's mind had shuddered to a halt as soon as the first words left her mouth.

_Liar._

The single word itself bounced around his brain like a chant, drowning out anything and everything else.

_Liar! Liar! Liar! _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm doing NaNoWriMo 2019, or at least I'm going to try you guys. It might not all be this fic, but so long as those 50,000 words get written I don't think it matters all that much if it's one project or several.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so Nano didn't go to plan and honestly 2020 has been a complete shit-show leaving me with no time to even look at this (although I think about it constantly), so let's just add to that carnage shall we? I have read all of the beautiful, wonderful, stupendous comments I've gotten on this fic so far and am eternally grateful for the support and encouragement. I'm sorry I haven't replied to....any of them... Not for lack of caring, but because I feel so overwhelmed when I try to sit down to do that my brain goes blank. Just know that I love and cherish all of them. They also make me smile because I always seem to get them at 3 in the morning where I am???? 
> 
> I've had this third chapter for a while and rewritten it like three times. For a part where nothing really happens, it was difficult to write and more was planned, but I can't get that transition right so that's just going to be another chapter. Whoops! That being said, I have an outline and an idea of where I want to take this. My tags are a travesty, so those will probably get updated with each additional update from here (yes there will be more, no I have no idea when or how often - as much as mental health will allow)
> 
> Speaking of mental health - while I do want to finish this fic (that's my goal!!!) - I do want to get into writing some little oneshots or ficlets with slightly less depressing themes and more fluff. Maybe some modern AU FE3H perhaps >.> My forte has always been whump and melodrama, but I want to get better at fluff too.

Ingrid had indeed had more to say about that morning's little fiasco, and after several minutes of whispered ranting Sylvain was glad for the chime of the morning bells summoning them to class for possibly the first time in his life. Ingrid stopped mid-rant at the peal of sound coming from the cathedral's bell tower and narrowed her eyes to tiny slits.

“This isn't over,” she hissed as she grabbed his arm and started marching towards the classroom commons.

“Woah woah! I can find my way to class on my own Ing'. I'm not that stupid,” Sylvain joked even as she half dragged him across the monastery grounds. The glare she shot him over her shoulder seemed to suggest that she thought otherwise and Sylvain quickly shut his mouth.

In truth, Sylvain would have liked to go back into the dining hall and grab something to eat and chat with Felix, even if only for a short while before class. He hadn't had breakfast after all, not with that train wreck of a breakfast date, and Felix was likely fresh from the training grounds. The swordsman was always in a (marginally) better mood immediately following a good spar or his usual intense training regime. 

Before he could fully follow that line of thought and mold it into a plan to free himself, the other red-head from the Blue Lions bounced up to them. 

“Hi, Ingrid! Hey, Sylvain. Have you guys seen Felix?” Annette asked, seemingly unaffected by the sight of Ingrid bodily dragging Sylvain behind her.

“He's in the dining hall. We just passed him.”

“Thanks!” Annette chirped before dashing away, apparently also oblivious to Ingrid's shortly clipped answers, as if she was restraining herself from exploding again. Sylvain watched her go until she whipped around a hedge, nearly knocking over Tomas in her hurry.

“Wonder what she wants with Felix,” Sylvain wondered aloud. Ingrid relented in her pulling and instead settled for holding his elbow as if he were the one doing the escorting and not the other way around. 

Ingrid's whole body still practically hummed with disapproval, “I'm not done with you, yet. But if you must know, the Professor wanted him to try learning more reason magic and Annette has been helping him out. I saw them in the library last night before curfew.”

Sylvain bristled a little. “I know reason magic too...” he mumbled under his breath.

“You just learned how to cast a basic fireball spell last moon.”

“It's more than you can do.”

“Hence, why it's Annette and not either of us.” Ingrid stopped as they reached the doors to the Blue Lion classroom but didn't drag him inside. Instead, she turned to look up at her friend. “Is everything okay? You're acting...weird.”

“I'm not acting weird!” Sylvain scoffed and waved his free hand, even as his heart clenched painfully in his chest. “Just a little tired is all,” he mumbled as he looked away. At least that was the truth.

Ingrid still hadn't looked away and it was making Sylvain's skin crawl with heat again. She always had been pretty good at looking right through him. He could taste iron in the back of his mouth when he swallowed the lump that formed in his throat.

“Sylvain, six different girls including Annette, just passed us on the way here and you didn't even look at them.”

Oh.

“Maybe they just weren't my type,” Sylvain said, hoping to look casual as he rubbed a hand along the back of his neck and looked away. 

The flash of anger was back. It always simmered so close to the surface these days. “Anything in a skirt is your type!”

Sylvain scoffed again. “That's not true.”

He didn't need to be looking at her to know Ingrid's mouth was pulled down at the corners, but despite that her eyes would be sad. Once upon a time, when it was just the five of them; Glenn, Felix, Sylvain, Dimitri, and Ingrid, there would never have been any secrets between them. But that was a long time ago.

The silence between them stretched for several seconds until Sylvain could do nothing else but look back at her.

“This morning wasn't an accident...was it Sylvain?” His wince seemed to be all the answer she needed, which was good because he was fairly sure if he tried to speak he might just throw up right there in the grass.

“Why did you do that?”

All he could do was shrug and try not to let on how his gut lurched with anxiety.

“Sylvain, you know I'm your friend, right? That you can tell me anything?”

Sylvain worried his bottom lip, considering her words. Maybe before their lives had become so complicated he might have taken her up on her offer. He might have even felt some relief in telling someone. 

But that was then. Back before Duscur was razed to the ground and Glenn was buried on his shield. Before Miklan was disowned and exiled from the only home he had ever known, even if no one in it truly cared about him.

And this was now.

“Sorry, Ing'. There's nothing to tell.”

**Author's Note:**

> *laughs nervously before throwing myself into the sun*


End file.
